Paper comparing Simpler Syntax, Minimalism and HPSG and Ms explaining motivation to return to GB style analysis of German

[Stefan Müller]

Hi everybody,

There is a discussion note on Simpler Syntax, Minimalism, CG, and HPSG 
that is to appear soon (I hope) in Language.

http://hpsg.fu-berlin.de/~stefan/Pub/unifying-everything.html

If you have any comments, please let me know. If you intend to send me 
comments, please drop me a line, so that I can wait.

Related to this paper is a book manuscript (currently really a rough 
draft), which is a translation of two articles that were published in 
2005 in German. In these papers I explained why I gave up my Reape style 
linearization-based analysis (which is still working in the Babel 
system) in favor of a GB style head movement analysis (Kiss, Meurers).

http://hpsg.fu-berlin.de/~stefan/Pub/gs.html

I will go over this ms as soon as possible and adapt it to my current 
views, but the one by one translation of the 2005 papers may be useful 
already.


The summary of all of this is that both Construction Grammar/Simpler 
Syntax and GB/Minimalist theories are right to some extend and one 
should come together again. If one abstracts away from technical stuff 
(derivations, enumerations, transderivational constraints, labeling, 
...) and rhetorics one is left with the head-filler schema, the head 
specifier schema and the head-complement schema. So one has a 
constraind-based version of Minimalism, something that would be 
compatible with what psycholinguist tell us. If we then add some phrasal 
schemata that are needed in certain parts of the grammar (as argued for 
by Jackendoff and Jacobs for instance), we get a plausible theory of 
language.

I am looking forward to comments/discussion (per mail or later in Language).

Best wishes

         Stefan

-- 
Stefan Müller       Tel: (+49) (+30) 838 52973
                     Fax: (+49) (030) 838 4 52973
Institut für Deutsche und Niederländische Philologie
Deutsche Grammatik
Habelschwerdter Allee 45
14 195 Berlin

http://hpsg.fu-berlin.de/~stefan/

http://hpsg.fu-berlin.de/OALI/ (Open Access)

http://hpsg.fu-berlin.de/Projects/CoreGram.html